It's an ignorant statement to make in either case. I'd be interested to see someone make a conclusive case that it IS a work of fiction.

I get miffed that people assume (as brutal did in his above post) that faith is "blind." Meaning, anyone who would believe that bullsh*t MUST not have thought things through -- they're ignorant, uneducated, inbred, etc.. Quite an assumption.

Huh? In your opinion, what is "the story of the New Testament?"


Oh Lord, where do I start with this?

When you say "hard evidence," what do you mean? It's a written (or rather a collection of) account(s) taken from several human authors over several hundred years, which includes history, law, prophecy, correspondence, instruction, songs, poetry... I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call any of that "hard evidence." There is ample evidence to suggest correct translation and preservation of the various books of the Bible from the original texts and oral histories. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls showed us its textual integrity.

As to the events mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments, there is a glut of archaeological evidence, and written histories contemporary with the writing of the events of the four Gospels (Jewish historian Josephus, for example,) which mention certain events and people, including Jesus of Nazareth.

That evidence aside, however, the biggest proof I find of the truth of the Bible comes in the accounts and histories of the people of the early church. There exists not a single historical account of one of Jesus' followers breaking down under torture or threat of death and admitting that "that whole resurrection thing was a lie." Not one. You'd think that SOMEONE would have been eager to live rather than die protecting a lie.

Also, why is there no mention in Roman or Jewish histories of someone exposing "that whole Jesus hoax?" As much face (not to mention life) that Roman soldiers and officials in Judea stood to lose... why, with the full power of the Roman Empire behind them, were they unable to provide evidence that Jesus' resurrection and subsequent appearances to his followers were no more than a hoax?

I, in turn, mean you no offense, Nosebleed (or any of the other atheists reading this.) Don't be so quick to assume that no evidence exists simply because there's nothing there to quantify. A God that could be measured would soon become just another fixture of nature, like a maple tree -- something to admire, certainly... but not to be worshiped in a spirit of free will and surrender.

By the way, the sheep thing? It's not a picture of blind following. It's a metaphor for comfort, trust, security, safety -- all the things a sheep receives from its shepherd.

Afterthought: Would it be fair to call you a "blind atheist?" Given the complexities of the universe, and the immense mathematical probability of a planet like the Earth even existing with the correct combination of conditions present to support and encourage the development of life from inorganic materials into increasingly complex forms of life, doesn't that require a bit of blind faith on your part to believe, against all probability, that there is NOT a higher power behind it all?

Fodder for another thread, I know... Sorry Link.

I would just like to say this in regards to Josephus
The authenticity of Josephus' references to Jesus, also know as the Testimonium Flavianum, has been disputed since the 17th century, and by the mid 18th century the consensus view was that it was a forgery. This conclusion was questioned in the 20th century and the intellectual controversy will probably never be resolved, so no point arguing over that.


The way I see it is this:
Just because something is highly improbable, does not mean its impossible without divine intervention.
It makes more sense to believe that it was an entirely random act, instead of going "I don't understand how this all came to be, so it must be some sort of divine being who did it all"

I don't think being a Theist means being ignorant and then assuming a higher power did it.

Yeah, maybe back in the old days when everyone were Polytheists and before Judaism came around, everyone used it to explain things they didn't know (ex: The sun, rain, lightning, etc.) through gods.

I don't really think it's ALL like that nowadays, though.

I would be very interested in continuing this in a new thread, for purely academic reasons. I think that the topic of mutual respect which the OP wanted to address and hash out has been largely... dealt with?

I don't know.

If people can't see each other as intellectual equals (or at least within the same intellectual order of magnitude,) can they ever truly respect each other, or their respective opinions?

Honestly, if someone says "I respect your right to your blind faith," isn't that just a backhanded way of saying "I'm sorry that you haven't thought this through logically, and you have my pity, but go ahead and babble incoherently, I don't mind?"

When it's a question of boxers or briefs, it's less of an issue: it is a matter of personal preference. When it comes to basic foundations of a person's beliefs in his or her own existence, and purpose (or lack thereof) however, it gets a little trickier.

In all honesty, although I agree with the supposition that every person has a right to believe what they want to believe, and to voice and argue those beliefs, as a theist I must admit that I secretly(?) regard everyone as a seeker of the truth, which I believe to be mostly in line with Judeo-Christian ethos. I hope that doesn't offend anyone here. I don't regard ANYONE (especially anyone open to discussing this sort of thing openly) as either inferior or superior to myself, in ANY way, based on what they believe or don't believe.

If you haven't noticed, I'm still "seeking" too.

Actually being a Theist means exactly that.. well maybe not the ignorance, but if you believe in a god, then ofcourse you believe that he/she created the universe and therefore everything around you. Atleast I know that's what Christians believe

Humans are arrogant in their beliefs, none of us know whether a higher power truly exists and I doubt we ever will. To be honest I don't really think that it matters anyway as we're under no obligation to worship them.

As a man of "science," the thought has occurred to me. One of my mentors has suggested that God is pure energy. I'm not sure entirely what I think about this... but "energy" is damn hard to define, compared to matter.

As to the "universe always [being] there," I'm assuming that you believe in an infinite cycle to the universe -- a series of big bangs, expansions, contractions, big crunches, followed by more of the same. In that case, the current estimated age of the universe (appx. 16 billion years, estimated by observed acceleration of galaxies outside our own, and reverse extrapolation of their past positions back to a shockingly central point) would be simply "the current phase -- only the latest of many." I find this unlikely, due to basic thermodynamics' assertion that all systems trend toward low potential energy, decreased molecular motion, and increased disorder. Simply put, there are only so many times that a system like that would continue to "bang" -- and it likely wouldn't have banged in the first place, at all or to the degree of success that it apparently did.

If... if this pure energy being set these processes in motion with the degree of precision necessary to get US, 16 billion years later, then I believe two things: a) the being is not subject to the natural laws which it authored (ie: it wouldn't necessarliy have to have a begining, because it wouldn't be subject to the thermodynamic laws demanding that everything in the universe has an ending), and b) call it God or whatever, THAT'S a being worth my awestruck worship.

Again... new thread, anyone?

There is a "Religion Topic", it's at the very bottom of page three of this section. Revive it I say!

Yeah, but it doesn't mean we are saying that because we can't explain what is around us.

Edit: Although this may be some people's reasoning. That as well as fear.

I believe in God because it makes perfect sense. To me.

Edit 2: Isn't it kind of ironic my 666th post would be one about God?

Since most religions require you to beileve in a deity that cant be proven, is that not blind faith no matter how you twist and turn it?

I don't think that topic title is very appropriate. Not offensive or anything, just not appropriate, imo.

Here is what I think.

All religions going back a considerable period of time (1000 years or more) all have the same basic stories. They contain the same basic information. They all have things in common that any scientist would consider more than a coinsidence if put infront of them.

They all have a creation story that has the same basic elements. They all have the thought that God lives above us and came down to create us in one way or another. They all have the story of the great deluge (that means that water at one point covered the entire earth as some form of something from God to God's creations on earth) most of the time in a form of punishment or cleansing of bad things on the earth.

I find that these things and the fact that with all the talk of evolution and big bang and such that we were created in one way or another. I dont know what story is correct, or if its a mash of all or some of them together, but I dont think that we evolved. The reason I dont think that we evolved is that lets say in the last 2000 years since we have started to record events and scientific research and such like that, there hasnt been anything, that I know of or heard of or had an evolutionist point out so far, that has shown that something, somewhere has evolved from one state to another. Adaptation doesnt count because everything adapts, but nothing has evolved into a higher state or even shown signs of it.

There are also people out there who say things like "I believe that God used evolution to create people and the earth and the animals and plants". Well that wouldnt be the case. The reason for that is because evolution is not efficient. God wouldnt put into a plan that would take forever and be filled with other almost endless possibilities. If we are suposed to be created in His image then I dont think that his image was to start off as a protozoa or ameoba or whatever and now are walking about with new trainers and cell phones attached to our heads.

CRX Forum

Adaption doesn't count? You do realize that better adaption to the environment is a major part of evolution, don't you? That when a species develops a new trait that better help them survive in their environment is basically what evolution is all about. To say it doesn't count is close to unreasonable in a discussion such as this.

No observations made? What about the nylon eating bacteria, where the ability to be able to digest nylon allowed them to survive in areas and environments where they previously could not. Another example are the malaria carrying mosquitoes, which were thought to be extinct for a while as people though they had developed a poison which seemed to be able to wipe the mosquitoes out completely, thus large sections of rain forest was air bombed with the stuff, effectively killing every single mosquito in the area. However, a few of the mosquitoes had been born with a minor genetic difference which made them immune to the poison. These reproduced and presto! The malaria mosquitoes were back and the poison that had been used was now useless. If that isn't an example of a species being able to survive better thanks to a genetic trait, please tell me what is.

If you are looking for something drastic, like tigers growing wings to be able to hunt better, you are not going to see it in your lifetime and not in the time we've kept records. Evolution is slow, really slow. Life is estimated to have existed for 2,5 billion years, and when people are talking about evolution happening quickly, they are usually referring to changes developed over about a million years. When put up against these numbers, 2000 years seems like a pretty unreasonable time span to be expecting any major changes. Also, there is no such thing as a "higher state" in evolution, as it has no ultimate goal, no state which all species strive for. Take the crocodile for example, they have remained pretty much unchanged for quite some time, due to the simple reason that they have no need for any new traits as they are nearly perfectly adapted to the environment in which they live.

Also, when you say that things evolve from one state to another, please keep in mind that you are never going to see a creature with ready made features from the two species it's transitioning between. You are never going to see a duck with a crocodile head as evolution does not propose that we are to find being that are a blend of two current spieces. What you will find though are things like 'Tiktaalik' and 'Archaeopteryx' (Google it if you are curious on the details of these particular transitional fossils). With this in mind, we really can't tell if any of the animals we see today are in between two forms as we don't know what they will eventually evolve into.

Actually changes in our genetic code suggests that we are evolving, albeit not very rapidly. For example, in the northern parts of the world most people have an active gene that allows us to digest food and drinks containing lactose. However, in places like India this gene is not activated in most people, meaning that there are very few people who can digest lactose. So what we are seeing here is people who's genetic code has adapted to their environment, in this case the gene became dormant because lactose is not part of the diet in these parts of the world, thus there was no need for it. Should there come an age where the only things we have access to are milk products, it goes without saying that the people who don't have this gene activated would be in a lot of trouble, and that the few in that part of the world who can digest lactose would have a much greater chance of surviving and to reproduce. Eventually almost the entire population would have the gene activated i.e the genetic build up of the population would have changed so that they could better cope and survive, in other words, natural selection has acted and those who are fittest have survived, hence the term "Survival of the fittest".

Hope that clears up a thing or two.